Second Living Bay Sweetwater @ home

If you are a builder who uses a mac and viewer 2, you’ve already got two strikes against you. LOL. Or so the SL lore goes.

Using a mac is always challenging in a program that’s built for windows. And viewer 2 … well, viewer 2 is just plain challenging to use on any platform. Especially if  you’re still trying to learn where things are in viewer 2 — like me, LOL.

So today I’m going to share 2 things I learned by trial and error today.

(1) How to find Local Mode on Viewer 2 (commonly called The Ruler)

Builders often like to line up what they’re building on a grid so that measurements can be exact, and placement of, for example, a beam one one side of a house will be at exactly the same relative location on the other side.

This used to be very easy to find in viewer 1.23: In the edit menu build window, just below the icons of the build shapes, there was a small drop-down bar called “Ruler” or “Grid,” depending on the version. In any case, it was very easy to select “Local” or in later versions, the grid would appear in your building as soon as you picked that “Ruler” dropdown.

But in Viewer 2? Not so easy. It stumped three experienced builders, til we finally figured it out:

1. Get in Edit mode (that’s important)

2. Choose Build, Options, Grid Options.

3. In the Grid Options menu, select “Local” from the drop-down bar.

4. You’re done. There’s your “ruler.”

(2) How to link multiple objects at the same time.

Trick question! This is not really a viewer 2 issue or a mac issue, but because I thought it was, and so spent so long figuring it out, I thought I would include it here.

The key is to get in edit mode first. That’s the step I always forget. Then it’s pretty easy. Here are instructions, using viewer 2.

1. Get in Edit Mode

2. Choose Building, Options, then toggle:  Select by Surrounding, and Select Only My Objects.

3. Then you’ll be able to draw a little yellow box around all the objects you want to select (it’s easiest if you do this from above looking down). Each selected object will be outlined in white.

4. From the dropdown Build menu, select “Link.”

5. You’re done. Your objects are all linked. Btw, the last item selected will be your root prim, and your object will take it’s name. If you want the name of the linked object to be something different, just rename it in the General tab of the Build window.